VONT Digital Marketing Blog: Deep diving into the Digital World.

Digital Marketing for Healthcare: The Importance of Virtual Hubs

Posted: June 13, 2018

Marketing healthcare in the digital space can be challenging. To be effective there has to be a seamless connection from the call to action to the desired next step. For instance, if your ad reads “now accepting new patients,” you need to be able to accept new patients in the digital space. Not to do so is to risk the loss of new and existing patients.

Kim Laramy, Healthcare Strategist at VONT’s partner agency, Ethos, has over 30 years’ experience in healthcare marketing. In this short video, she explains how smaller hospitals and medical practices can solve this potential problem by creating a special landing page or microsite.

Transcript

Marketing healthcare in the digital space can be challenging. To be effective there has to be a seamless connection from the call-to-action in your digital communication to taking the desired next step on a website. For instance, if your ad says “now accepting new patients” you need to be able to accept new patients in the digital space.

For many smaller hospitals and medical practices that can be a hurdle that is hard to overcome. One potential solution is to develop a landing page or microsite that is totally dedicated to receiving those users who respond to your call-to-action.

Consider the following suggestions for developing a landing page or microsite to help you get started.

Here is one example based on increasing primary care patients at a hospital.

First, VONT reviewed the existing website with an eye toward the user experience. We found that there were too many potential actions on the page – a prospective patient would need to sift through them all to determine the best course to take – not easy.

So, we revamped the page by adding a large box with very clear language about “REQUEST AN APPOINTMENT TODAY!” Clicking on this button led to completing an email to the hospital with the promise of a return call within 48 hours. The new button made it easy to connect with the hospital, easy for a prospective patient to know just what to do.

(Note: the behind-the-scenes work needed to make sure that the email is promptly answered is a vitally important component that cannot be underestimated.)

A second example involves the development of a microsite to serve as a virtual center for a collection of services. This example is for a virtual women’s center, but it could be done as virtual center for any number of service lines. In this case, the client wanted to bundle all of the services related to women’s healthcare in one location – and while it wasn’t feasible physically – it was very doable in the digital space.

The microsite included information and links to all of the existing services that related to women’s healthcare – from primary care through diagnostics to specialty care. VONT further segmented the content to make it age/stage-of-life specific.

One constant throughout the site was the “Request an Appointment” button. This approach was then marketed to women as a ‘one-stop’ shop for information and resources. The site didn’t try to replicate existing pages or information that already existed, but rather bundled it all together to make it easy for a woman to access.

The bottom line is that it is important to follow through on your digital advertising by making sure that prospective patients can easily find just what action you want them to take.

About VONT Performance Digital Marketing

At VONT we believe that change is the only constant in the digital world – and that excites us. When tools and environments are constantly changing, new opportunities to help our clients achieve success are constantly arising. Each new advertising technology, social platform, or design approach allows us to improve on the results we achieve for our clients.

We believe in this idea of continual fine-tuning so much that we named our company VONT, which means to achieve exponential improvement in incremental steps. It is our core belief, and the reason why we are not simply a web design company or simply a digital advertising agency, but rather a long-term, single source partner providing a comprehensive array of web development and digital marketing capabilities.

In short, we’re here so that our clients achieve success in the ever-changing digital world. If you’d like to learn more about VONT and the work we’ve done with our healthcare clients, visit our Work page. Or, if you have a question, or contact us. We’ll get right back to you!